I\u2019ve been thinking that since this site does not have an \u201cAbout Me\u201d page, I probably ought to offer up a some kind of profile of myself. Although I\u2019m 98% certain that the only folks who are reading this blog already know me, I am out there on that InterWeb-thingie now, so you never can tell. Besides, my friends (and you know who you are) might not know some of this stuff. So, without further ado, I offer up the following list of autobiographical tidbits:<\/p>\n
1. My full name, for those who don\u2019t know, is Reginald Jason Bennion.<\/strong><\/p>\n Don\u2019t laugh. \u201cReginald\u201d is a fairly common and perfectly respectable name in my ancestral homelands. It is also my father\u2019s name \u2013 which is one reason why I prefer to be known as \u201cJason.\u201d<\/p>\n (The other reason is that being called Reginald has always been something of a burden. You see, I grew up in an ethnically homogenous white-bread environment in which any unusual name produced great fear and consternation in the villagers, like it was a dreaded word of powerful magicks that, if uttered correctly, could damn one\u2019s soul and curdle the cat\u2019s milk. Alright, it wasn\u2019t that bad, but there was always a lot of confusion surrounding the name. When I was little, I used to dread the first day of school because I would inevitably have to break in a new teacher on the proper pronunciation of the name. It was almost comical to watch an educated grown-up confidently read off the handful of Michaels, Davids and Johns that preceded me in the roll, then suddenly stop, clear his or her throat, and attempt to sound out this alien word like a pre-schooler just introduced to Spot and the blue ball. I say that this process was almost<\/i> comical, because this exercise in linguistics would inevitably embarrass both the teacher and myself before it was over. I was often called \u201cRehinalday,\u201d on the assumption that any foreign-looking name must surely be Spanish in origin. I\u2019ve also been called \u201cRegina,\u201d which is the feminine version of the name, and heard my name pronounced with a hard \u201cg,\u201d like in the word \u201cregular.\u201d I once had a teacher call me \u201cRichard,\u201d apparently believing that he was looking at the biggest typo in the history of student records. These manglings of my good and proper Anglo-Saxon designator always produced gales of laughter from the other students, most of whom remembered me going through this same ritual the previous year. Damn small town schools, anyway\u2026)<\/p>\n 2. As of this moment, I am 34 years old.<\/strong><\/p>\n That means that I was a child in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s, and that I remember what things were like before the world was conquered by silicon. Yes, that\u2019s right kids, I\u2019m talking about the world before cable TV and video games, the world as it was when computers were large metal cabinets that contained spinning tape reels and lots of blinky lights (at least that\u2019s how they looked in the movies) and you had to actually get out of your chair to change the channel. I\u2019m not at all ashamed to admit that my sense of aesthetics was largely formed in that long-lost epoch and that the modern era is, in many ways, absolutely baffling to me. I\u2019m even willing to admit, in the time-honored tradition of grumpy old coots everywhere, that the world seemed like a better place back then. I think my friend Eric summed it up best for me over lunch one afternoon when he called me an analog kind of guy in a digital world.<\/p>\n None of which means that I am a technophobe or a neo-Luddite. After all, I am griping about the digital age on my very own Web page, right? I freely admit that DVD technology is manna from heaven to a movie fan like myself, and that my favorite films of recent years, The Lord of the Rings<\/i> trilogy, could never have been attempted without computer-generated special effects. And I\u2019d be a fool to try and convince you that a vinyl LP sounds better than a compact disc. Even so, I sometimes miss the way those vinyl records sounded. It wasn’t better by any stretch of the imagination, but it was different, and it was good in its own way. In the same spirit, I also miss the ringing of an actual bell when someone calls me on the telephone, and the simple stop-motion animations in a Ray Harryhausen film, and the way everyone could talk about shared media experiences like the first broadcast of Roots<\/i> when there were only three TV networks. There are a hundred similar little details of life that have vanished, most of them in the last ten or fifteen years, that I miss. It isn\u2019t that I can\u2019t let go of the past or that I don\u2019t appreciate the conveniences of the present. But I do believe in Golden Ages and I am prone to feelings of nostalgia, and the 21st Century that we\u2019re living in isn\u2019t the one that we were promised, damn it!<\/p>\n I intend to explore more of these ideas in subsequent entries. But for now, let\u2019s move along\u2026<\/p>\n 3. I grew up and still live in the general vicinity of Salt Lake City, Utah, home of the Mormon Church, the 2002 Olympics, and (according to our license plates) The Greatest Snow on Earth\u2122.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the homogenous white-bread environment I mentioned earlier. Or at least it used to be. The Salt Lake Valley, and especially my hometown of Riverton, has changed a great deal since I was a child, which is simultaneously good and bad. This valley has nearly doubled its population in the last ten years, and a good percentage of the growth \u2013 although not the majority of it, contrary to local belief — has come from outsiders moving into the area. Diversity has increased and my state\u2019s provincial little capitol city is dangerously close to becoming genuinely cosmopolitan. However, this transformation hasn\u2019t come without its costs. The comfortable, rural atmosphere I grew up in is gone, replaced by sprawling suburbia, traffic bottlenecks, and a freakin\u2019 Olive Garden restaurant every five miles. In addition, a culture war now rages as Mormon stalwarts and long-time residents battle with the newcomers and the forces of liberalism to determine what Salt Lake is going to look like in the future. Again, this is a topic I plan to write more about in later posts\u2026<\/p>\n 4. I am not married, but I am in a long-term relationship with a lovely lady named Anne.<\/strong><\/p>\n Anne is two years younger than me, grew up just south of me in a town called Bluffdale, and attended the same schools I did while growing up. We knew each other for years before we got involved romantically, and, even though our arrangement is a bit unconventional, we\u2019ve been good together for a very long time. I\u2019m sure she\u2019ll be making further appearances in this space, especially once I get a few photos scanned and prepped for the gallery page\u2026<\/p>\n (Watch out, dear, I might use that Opus photo you\u2019re so fond of!)<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I think that\u2019s enough for now. This post has grown far longer than I was planning when I started typing. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if I\u2019ve lost what few readers I have. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Next time, I\u2019m going to start delving into some of my hobbies and interests by discussing my all-time favorite movies. Until we meet again\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been thinking that since this site does not have an \u201cAbout Me\u201d page, I probably ought to offer up a some kind of profile of myself. Although I\u2019m 98% certain that the only folks who are reading this blog already know me, I am out there on that InterWeb-thingie now, so you never can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}